8 Signs a Company is doing Employee Advocacy Wrong

Employee Advocacy might be a buzzword that many leaders are investing in and trying to better understand but we’re far from making it a trend that makes a difference in today’s business world.  The idea of a social employee isn’t something a brand or leader needs to authorize because no matter the industry or business, employees are active on social if the brand knows it or not.  The key is empowering, training and encouraging employees to collaborate, share, build communities and help amplify the brands content, culture and story.

In my recent post “Employee Advocacy, The Secret to Social Business Success!” I highlighted that employee advocacy is essential for success with social business initiatives such as social selling, influencer marketing and customer service.  Although some companies are embracing this fact too many leaders and brands are going through the motions or attempting to automate employee advocacy to the point of eliminating the employee element completely.  This takes the social out of social business and in my opinion does more harm than good.

Here are 8 signs a company is doing employee advocacy wrong:

1. Leaders are talking about “Employee Advocacy” as a project or task that they aren’t a part of or have no active part in.
2. Your have social accounts with employees names on them but they’re being managed and automated by your social media team.
3. All employees share the exact some post at the exact same time.
4. The only content that your social employee accounts share are advertising, marketing and sales content from the brand.
5. Vanity Metrics and social media measurements like number of posts, klout score or number of followers are being incentivized and rewarded above valuable social actions like engagement, collaboration and community involvement.
6. Employee Advocacy is a task or job assigned to one department or one leader instead of it being a company wide change that creates new experiences while redefining the culture and company philosophy.
7. Employee Advocacy is setup to only benefit the brand without an investment in the employees personal brand, establishing managers as thought leaders or training employees to contribute content, insight and have a say in the social strategy.
8. Software and company politics are blamed for the programs failure instead of focusing on the culture and communication changes needed prior to implementing and social business tool.